Michael Portillo

Portillo's maternal grandfather, John Waldegrave Blyth (1873–1962), was a prosperous linen manufacturer from Kirkcaldy, who left an art collection worth millions to the Kirkcaldy Galleries.

Portillo was registered as a Spanish citizen at the age of four, and, in accordance with Spanish naming customs, which require a person to have two surnames, his Spanish passport names him as Miguel Portillo Blyth.

Portillo's now well-known "love affair with trains" started when he was very young.

He owned a clockwork train set, and envied friends who had electric ones.

Additionally, his mother took him on 13-hour trips from London to Kirkcaldy aboard a steam-hauled night train, the Starlight Special, to visit his British grandparents, and he had summer holidays on the Isle of Wight, where he "loved" the steam railway between Ryde and Ventnor.

Portillo's father, a devout Catholic, was a member of left-wing movements in the 1930s and fled Madrid when it fell to General Franco in 1939, settling in England.

Michael Denzil Xavier Portillo (born 26 May 1953) is a British journalist, broadcaster and former Conservative Party politician.

His broadcast series include railway documentaries such as Great British Railway Journeys and Great Continental Railway Journeys.

Portillo was born in Bushey, Hertfordshire, on 26 May 1953 to an exiled Spanish republican father, Luis Gabriel Portillo (1907–1993) and a Scottish mother, Cora Waldegrave de Portillo ( Blyth; 1919–2014).

In 1961, aged eight, Portillo appeared in a television advertisement for Ribena, a blackcurrant cordial drink.

He was educated at Stanburn Primary School in Stanmore, Greater London, and Harrow County School for Boys and then won a scholarship to Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he studied history.

While at school Portillo had supported the cause of the Labour Party; he attributed his embrace of conservatism at Cambridge to the influence of the right-wing Peterhouse historian Maurice Cowling.

He became head of the London Diplomatic Office of the Government in Exile in 1972.

Portillo graduated in 1975 with a first-class degree in history, and, after a brief stint with Ocean Transport and Trading Ltd., a shipping and transport company, he joined the Conservative Research Department in 1976.

He began his working life as a graduate trainee with the transport company Ocean Group plc, before joining the Conservative Research Department in 1976.

Following the Conservative victory in 1979, he became a government adviser to David Howell at the Department of Energy.

He left to work for Kerr-McGee Oil between 1981 and 1983.

On 12 February 1982, Portillo married Carolyn Claire Eadie.

In the 1983 general election, he fought his first electoral contest, in the Labour-held seat of Birmingham Perry Barr, losing to the incumbent Jeff Rooker.

A former member of the Conservative Party, he was Member of Parliament (MP) for Enfield Southgate from 1984 to 1997 and Kensington and Chelsea from 1999 to 2005.

Portillo obtained a first class degree in history from the University of Cambridge, having been a student at Peterhouse.

First elected to the House of Commons in a 1984 by-election, Portillo served as a junior minister under both Margaret Thatcher and John Major, before entering the Cabinet in 1992 as Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

Portillo returned to advisory work for the government, and, in December 1984, he stood for and won the Enfield Southgate by-election, following the murder of the incumbent, Sir Anthony Berry, in the bombing of the Grand Hotel, Brighton by the IRA.

Initially, he was a Parliamentary Private Secretary to John Moore, and then an assistant whip.

In 1987, Portillo was given his first ministerial post, as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security; the following year, he was promoted to Minister of State for Transport.

Portillo has stated that he considers "saving the Settle to Carlisle railway" to be his greatest achievement.

He was a strong supporter of Margaret Thatcher.

In 1990, Portillo was appointed Minister of State for Local Government, in which post he argued in favour of the ultimately highly unpopular Community Charge system (popularly known as "the Poll Tax").

He demonstrated a consistently right-of-centre line (exemplified by his insistence, in a well-publicised speech, on placing "clear blue water" between the policies of the Conservatives and other parties ) and was favoured by Norman Tebbit and Margaret Thatcher, who said of him "[W]e expect great things of you, do not disappoint us".

He was promoted to Secretary of State for Employment in 1994.

A Thatcherite and a Eurosceptic, he was seen as a likely challenger to Major during the 1995 Conservative leadership election, but did not run, and was subsequently promoted to Secretary of State for Defence.

As Defence Secretary, he pressed for a course of "clear blue water": purist policies separating the Conservatives from the Labour Party.

Portillo unexpectedly lost the hitherto safe Conservative Enfield Southgate seat at the 1997 general election.

This led to the coining of the expression "Portillo moment".

Returning to the Commons in the 1999 by-election in Kensington and Chelsea, Portillo rejoined the frontbench as Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Standing for the leadership of the party in 2001, he finally came in third place behind Iain Duncan Smith and Kenneth Clarke.

He retired from the House of Commons and from active politics at the 2005 general election.

Since leaving politics, Portillo has pursued his media interests by presenting and participating in a wide range of television and radio programmes.

Portillo's passion for steam trains led him to make the BBC documentary series Great British Railway Journeys, beginning in 2008, in which he travels the British railway networks, referring to various editions of Bradshaw's Guide. The success of the show led Portillo to present series about railway systems in other countries.

In 2022 he began to present a political show Portillo for the British news channel GB News.